


Stones of a Feather

by Brevity (AmosLee1023)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Angst and Romance, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Drugs, Gay Sex, Horror, M/M, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Secret Organizations, Sexual Content, Suspense, Tags May Change, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 14:25:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12819474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmosLee1023/pseuds/Brevity
Summary: [[Sequel to Two Stones and One Bird. You don't have to read the predecessor, and it's recommended not to because it wasn't too well written.]]It's been two years since Eren was whisked into Levi and Hanji's lives. Throughout that time, he has lost his family, gotten Armin involved with their jobs, and failed to stop the mass reproduction of the drug Titan.Titan is being spread like wild fire, and people who take it are called Titans: that are becoming insane and killing innocent people.With Hanji out of commission, Eren, Levi, and Armin are having to face the aftermath of their failed attempt to stop the drug's spread, but there is a new problem.A steam boat with 150 crates of Titan is headed to Shiganshina, and they have to try stopping it before it reaches its destination. If they can.





	Stones of a Feather

“ _Great. Prep him for the injection.”_

Armin’s head was spinning, his eyes fuzzy. He couldn’t do anything, but he could _feel_ everything. Whatever they had drugged him with, it was soaking his body in a lightness that made him scared that he was floating and would to fall. He was hot, sweating, and his eyes felt heavy but he didn’t want them to close, because he didn’t know what would happen if he fell asleep. His shirt’s sleeve was pulled up, the fabric running over the hair on his arm and sending jolting pain through him from each little motion.

Then came the rubber band. They started tying it over his arm, tight, tight, _tight_ \- he arm was going to fall off, the pain was unbearable; the pinching from the rubber and the tightness of it. His vein was popping out so predominantly that he was terrified it was going to burst. He tried to say something, anything, but his mouth was numb. The pain in his arm was making him even more hot because it was making tears spring to his eyes, and he didn’t want to cry.

The needle slipping into his skin was a lot less painful than any other part of it, but then the lights shut off and he _screamed_.

“Armin! Armin, wake up!” Eren nudged the sleeping blonde to try and wake him. He had been tossing in his sleep for a while, but then he screamed, and Eren didn’t want Levi coming in, because they were both still naked.

“Dude, don’t wake up Levi!” Eren pat the blonde’s cheeks until his eyes opened, glassy and threatening to spill over with tears. Eren blinked and pulled Armin to sit up in the bed. “Are you okay?” he asked, looking over Armin’s face, but the blonde was stuck in his dream. His left arm was numb, probably asleep, and he was dizzy.

“I need water,” he managed, and Eren nodded quickly, getting out of bed and pulling his boxers back on before going to leave the room for the kitchen. Armin waited until Eren was gone to sob.

He put his heavy arm in his lap and tried not to move a single muscle, because it was an unbearable, uncomfortable pain.

Two years had passed since they blew the charges in that building. Now the teenagers were nineteen, and they were living with Levi because they didn’t have homes. Both of Eren’s parents were dead, and Armin’s grandpa had died in the hospital two months after the whole ordeal; of ‘natural causes’. Armin was the only one to try and go back into civilization after it all, but it didn’t work out right. Mikasa wanted to know what had happened, and where Eren was, and everyone else just kept pressing and pressing to the point that Armin ran away. He ran away to Eren and Levi in hopes to belong, but he was the only one having nightmares.

Hanji was in a coma, and Levi needed someone else to help be the brains, so he let Armin in. They had done twenty three jobs in their time together, killing people infected with the drug, because it had spread. People all over were using it, and they were going crazy and butchering people. The only reason Armin agreed to any of it was because he knew that he had been injected with something bad, maybe something like what those people were taking- the experiments. He would see things. He would see _awful_ things. He would imagine Eren trying to kill him when he was offering him a drinking cup, or he would see the walls peeling away and showing beating, raw, bloody flesh underneath. He would see all sorts of terrible things, and he wanted to find out how to stop them.

Eren came back into the room with a cup of water, and he sat back on the bed, holding it out to Armin. Armin’s arm had calmed down to little tingles, and he wiped his eyes and took the cup to drink from it.

“You okay?” Eren asked, watching him intently, and the blonde nodded. Eren watched Armin’s tense form, twisting his lips. Armin was having nightmares an awful lot lately. The brunette reached out to hug Armin lightly, but the blonde didn’t hug him back, just held his cup in one hand, his other hand resting in his lap.

The water was cold and ran in a chilling stream down Armin’s throat and chest, passed his heart and finally to his gut. It was refreshing, but his body still quivered with scared tremors.

Eren rubbed Arm’s back lightly before letting him go and looking at the wall, perching on the edge of the bed. He gave a little sigh, and Armin didn’t look at him, his eyes on the blanket that covered his clammy, nude body.

They were unhappy.

Armin was finally with Eren, like he had always wanted, but it still seemed as though Eren was hesitant with everything. He showed more enthusiasm towards work, and killing the infected. ...Would he kill Armin?

“It’s six in the morning,” Eren finally sighed, and Armin looked at him with his glassy blue eyes. “We should see if there’s anything planned for the day; I saw Levi awake in the living room,” the brunette said before turning his gaze to Armin. He gave a half smile to the blonde, but he didn’t smile back, just averted his gaze.

“...Alright, I’ll get dressed.” Armin’s arm was still heavy and tingling, but he couldn’t tell Eren no. That was why he was so exhausted; because the drug was spreading like a wild fire, and more and more people were using it for its strength and enhancements. They just didn’t care about the side affects. It was just like a normal drug, but this one didn’t kill you. It made _Titans_.

Eren stood up from the bed and leaned down to kiss Armin’s head before leaving the room, leaving Armin hurting and alone. The blonde shut his eyes and gave a shaky sigh to calm himself before gripping the blanket with his sleeping hand and tossing it off.

 _Wake up_.

Armin clenched his hand into a fist before loosening it and straightening his fingers out. Then he did it again. Then again, until the pins started dissolving. He stood from the bed and stooped down to pick up his clothes that were on the floor. Then he grabbed Eren’s, stuffing them into a ball of dirty clothes. He walked to the clothes basket in the corner of the room and dropped them all in, but the sound of something heavy hitting the plastic bin had him digging through the clothes until he found his phone.

The screen lit up with a notification, and he unlocked his phone to look at it.

Among the newest notification, there were numerous others. Since Eren had reformed to being a hitman like Levi, he had left everyone behind. He didn’t have a phone anymore, he didn’t get on social media anymore, and he didn’t ever tell his friends about what had happened, or that he was okay.

Armin didn’t like killing. He didn’t feel like he fit in in either their old world nor their new world. He hadn’t talked to his friends since he left them and came back to Eren and Levi, but he couldn’t just ditch them.

_22 new text messages from Mikasa._

_32 missed calls from Jean._

_11 new text messages from Connie._

_20 new text messages from Sasha._

_50 new texts from Jean._

Armin cleared his notifications, like he always did. Then he walked to the dresser in the room and grabbed some clothes before going to the bathroom.

He put his phone and clothes on the sink’s counter and stepped into the shower. After turning on the water, he shut his eyes and stood under the shower head, letting the water pour over him.

He had learned to keep his eyes shut in the shower. Once inside, he started seeing things. Shadows, blood raining down on him, hands reaching out to him.

If he kept his eyes shut, he only felt a slight paranoia.

He washed his hair, and scrubbed down his body. He could feel light bruises on his skin from Eren, others from their jobs, but he ignored the little nicks of pain so that he could hurry out of the shower.

Why did Levi and Eren act so normal? So numb to everything? They just went about everything like it was _normal_. It _wasn’t normal_.

Armin waited until he felt clear water running through his hair, and then he shut off the water. He pulled the shower curtain open and then opened his eyes. It all looked normal. The toilet, the sink, the walls, the light.

He stepped out of the shower and grabbed the towel from the towel rack, wrapping it around himself. He didn’t wipe the mist from the mirror, or look anywhere other than his body and clothes. The foggy mirror was a shield against any scares waiting to mar him.

After dressing, Armin’s phone lit up from the sink, and he looked at it.

_1 missed call from Jean._

_1 new text message_.

Both were about the time he had jumped into the shower, and Armin stared at the notifications. There was a pressing want to open the text message, but just when his thumb moved to unlock his phone, there was a knock on the door that made him jump.

“Y-yes?”

“Did you take a shower? Come on, we have some stuff to do,” Eren sounded from outside of the bathroom, and Armin slipped his phone into his back pocket.

“Alright.”

l.l

Levi was pouring Sally some dog food when Eren and Armin came to him. Eren had gotten dressed, and Armin’s hair was wet.

The noirette motioned to the two while walking from the kitchen to the living room, leaving Sally wagging his tail and crunching his food hungrily.

Levi sat in a chair that Eren and Armin had deemed his new favorite, so the other two sat on the couch. Levi leaned forward in his seat to grab a note pad from the coffee table before sitting back and clearing his throat of morning scratchiness.

“There’s a new one,” he said, but it was unsurprising. They would get, at most, five cases a day. Eren put his elbows on his knees.

“Is it for right now?”

“No, but it’s gonna be a hell of a lot difficult. Because it’s moving,” Levi spoke as he lifted pages of the note pad, looking at different things he had written down. Eren furrowed his eyebrows.

“What do you mean ‘moving’?”

“Moving. It’s a shipment going east, a hundred and fifty crates. It’s going to stop about three cities from here. From there, they’re most likely going to sell it, or they’re going to disperse it amongst the locals. Erwin got word that it’s going to arrive in about a week, and we’ve got to try stopping it before.”

“Okay, well, where is it?”

“That’s the part I don’t know. It was spotted a state over, but then it disappeared. Reappeared here, vanished again.”

“A steam boat,” Armin said, and Levi nodded.

“Most likely.”

“How the hell are we gonna catch a _steam_ boat? We only have vehicles!” Eren flopped back into the couch and Levi gave a light shrug, reaching into his suit’s chest pocket for his pack of cigarettes.

“Hanji would say “With style”. Since I’m stuck with two kids who only fuck things up and each other, we don’t get the luxury of “style”.” Levi popped the cigarette between his lips and lit it, inhaling a heavy draw and closing his eyes.

Eren rolled his own. “At least we aren’t mopers.”

“Moping is better than fucking every hour of the night.”

“If the boat heads east and stops three city distances from us, then Shiganshina will be at risk of the drug!” Armin burst after processing and looked at the others, but Levi just took another puff of his cigarette before blowing out a big smoke cloud, and Eren scratched his head from his sunken spot.

“Really?” the brunette asked.

“Yeah, it’s just two cities from here- you know that.”

“I guess.”

“So what are you implying, Arlert?” Levi asked before taking another draw of his cigarette.

“Nothing. We just have to get that shipment before it reaches its spot.”

l.l

“I can see it.”

“Good. Don’t let it out of your sight.” Annie tightened the rubber band on his arm, tapping his forearm’s soft flesh to make his vein jump. He winced and she took the syringe from beside her on the ground, bringing it to his flesh. She slipped the needle in and pushed the plunger slowly, and he exhaled, watching the ship beyond her through his binoculars.

It was moving quick, but he could follow it easily.

When the injection was done, Annie slipped the needle from his skin and dropped it onto the rocky ground. She untied the band and motioned.

“Go and get Reiner, Bertoldt,” she looked at the brunette, who flexed his arm a little at the relief.

He nodded and watched the boat until it was covered by a row of trees in the distance, and then he dropped the binoculars to his side in his hand.

“I’ve lost the boat,” he said and looked down at Annie, and she gave a little breath.

“It’s alright. Tell Reiner to come here, and then try finding it again.”

“Alright.”


End file.
